kitchen stories (salmer fra kjøkkenet)

Dianna5 Comments

I’ve been meaning to share a bit about this design since the autumn 2021 issue of Amirisu came out in November! The issue’s theme is knitwear inspired by films, and I found the process of coming up with a design for this one super interesting, so I thought I’d share both my new design today as well as a bit about the film that inspired it. (I did briefly share a few thoughts over on the Amirisu blog back in November, but I’ll go into a bit more depth here.)

Kitchen Stories is a Norwegian/Swedish co-production directed by Bent Hamer (original title Salmer fra kjøkkenet, literally “psalms from the kitchen,” and occasionally you’ll find it with that title in English). The cardigan I designed shares its name with the film, but before I go into too much detail I’m going to take you back to the beginning of the process, when the original brief for the issue came through.

Normally when it’s time for a call for submissions, Amirisu (or any magazine, for that matter) has a theme in mind and they put together a visual mood board to steer you in the direction they want to go. This time, however, the call specified that they were looking for knitwear inspired by our favorite movies, and there was no mood board. I love films, so I loved this brief, but I also found it a unique challenge. With no visual mood board for the issue there were so many directions that designs could go in – likewise with the whole world of movies at my disposal. I feel like my taste in films can be a little eclectic, and the three movies I was able to narrow it down to probably showcase that – they were Kitchen Stories (a quiet and slightly absurd comedy from 2003 set in post-war Norway), Breathless (or À bout de souffle, Godard’s early French New Wave 1960 directorial debut), and My Neighbor Totoro (the 1988 animated Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film about a friendly forest spirit, to grossly oversimplify).

I put together my own mood board with stills and images from the films to help me start to brainstorm ideas. If I went for My Neighbor Totoro, the visual connection to the film could either be very literal (and thus, cartoony) or slightly more abstract, drawing on the themes of nature and environmentalism – not unlike the other pieces I’ve already designed for Amirisu. If I went for Breathless, which was shot in black and white on location in Paris, stripes seemed to be the overwhelming visual. Classic, but a bit anonymous as well. In the end it’s not a huge surprise I went for Kitchen Stories; the Norwegian setting definitely aligns with my style as a designer, and the film itself has an incredibly strong visual identity.

Isak sits at his kitchen table in the foreground, while Folke sits in his high observation chair in the background
“Salmer fra Kjøkkenet” 2003 © BulBul Film a.s., Regi Bent Hamer, Stillsfotograf Erik Aavatsmark

Kitchen Stories is set in rural Norway in the post-WWII period. Isak, a lone farmer, has signed up to participate in a study being carried out by the Swedish Home Research Institute investigating the kitchen habits of Norwegian bachelors. He regrets this decision and once Swedish researcher Folke shows up, Isak uses his kitchen very reluctantly. Director Bent Hamer was inspired by some of the studies the actual Hemmens forskningsinstitut carried out on housewives during this period, but the addition of Norwegian bachelors gives the film its slightly absurdist twist. At the film’s opening we watch a brigade of Swedish researchers drive their cars and trailers – which the researchers will reside in during the study – across the border to meet the Norwegian participants on the other side.

Swedish researchers driving their cars and blue-green trailers through a snowy landscape on their way to meet the Norwegian participants.

The trailers are all the same shade of minty blue-green, and this color theme continues throughout the film, as Isak’s kitchen walls are also a dusty blue-green color. Given that it’s one of my favorite color families (I’ve even recently painted my craft room a minty blue-green shade), the color palette for the design was clear from the start.

A man and a boy stand outside a building where a mint-green mid-century trailer is parked. The boy is leaning on a mint-green baby carriage in the same shade as the trailer. They both look up to the right.

While the film itself doesn’t necessarily feature stranded knitting, this mid-century period was definitely a heyday for traditional Norwegian kofter, or colorwork cardigans, so I opted to draw from that tradition for the design. It’s definitely a modern take on the garment, though, between the soft pastel color palette (whereas black and white would be more traditional) and the light weight of the yarn and the finished cardigan – in this period kofter tended to be made with thicker yarn knit at a very tight gauge. They were heavy and quite weatherproof, and could essentially be used as outerwear. My Kitchen Stories cardigan is knit with Biches et Bûches Le Petit Lambswool, a woolen spun light fingering weight yarn, knit at a gauge of 26 stitches per 4″ / 10 cm, making it quite appropriate for our well-insulated and well-heated modern interiors.

Masako models the Kitchen Stories cardigan, worn open over a black turtleneck and a brown skirt.
Image courtesy of Amirisu Magazine

The construction is relatively traditional, but with some small differences in technique to suit modern preferences when it comes to working steeks and cutting knitting. The body is worked in the round from the bottom up, with a steek for the front opening, steeks for each armhole, and front neck steek to create the curved neckline. The shoulders are seamed and the steeks are cut open before stitches are picked up around the armhole to work the sleeves top down. The neckband is picked up and knit back and forth, and finally the button bands are picked up from the front edges and worked back and forth. It’s a rewarding if somewhat labor intensive process, and I’m so pleased with the final cardigan. The motif I used came from Anne Bårdsgård’s Selbu Patterns (Selbumønster in the original Norwegian) and it’s one I’ve wanted to use since I first laid eyes on it, with its combination of geometric elements (like the strong diagonals) and organic ones (like the little pine bough motifs bring to mind both foliage but also frost patterns on a window).

The whole issue is a beautiful one (you can see the rest of the patterns on Ravelry here), and one of the things I looked forward to prior to its release was learning which films the other designers used as their source of inspiration. I loved finding out that My Neighbor Totoro made it into the issue after all, with Sari Nordland’s Satsuki (Rav link), a subtle but clever interpretation of the pattern on Totoro’s belly using minimalist cables. I was also happy to see the French New Wave represented as well, with Orlane Sucche’s Cléo (Rav link) inspired by Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7. I’m so grateful that I got to be part of this issue.

a new year

Dianna6 Comments
A close-up of tree branches in the winter sunlight, with icy snow beginning to melt off. The background is blurred and the sunlight pours in from the left.

Happy new year to you all! It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? It seems I haven’t posted since August, and if I’m honest, 2021 feels like a year that just quietly slipped by. I can hardly believe Christmas and the new year have come and gone again already. Nonetheless, I wanted to pop by here to say hello, wish you all a happy new year, and share a few wintry snaps from my first long walk of the year.

I spent an hour and a half on Trondheim’s Ladestien trail today, on what was an absolute stunner of a day. Ladestien follows the shoreline from the eastern edge of the city center well out to Ranheim and beyond, so many parts of it are in shadow at this time of year, but I love being by the water, particularly as the other side of the fjord is beautifully sunny on a day like today.

An old wooden storage building sits in the shady snow. It's painted red and has decorative white trim on its pitched roof.
Snow-covered mountains sit on the horizon across the fjord under a blue sky.
A red wooden boathouse sits a the snow-covered shoreline at high tide. The water comes all the way up to the boathouse.
Light stretches down a path in the woods. The sun is low in the sky so the trees cast

I’ll leave you with that today, but you’ll hear more from me very soon!

FO: willis shirt

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Last week I had the chance to do a bit of sewing, and made my very first collared shirt! It was a project I’ve been planning for a little while, chosen pretty deliberately as a skill-building project. The pattern is the Willis Shirt from Seamwork, and I chose it because aside from the collar, the other techniques (the button placket and bias facings) were ones I’ve successfully executed and feel relatively comfortable with. All in all, I’m really proud of how it came together, even if there are some things I would do differently next time, and I learned a lot making it.

Firstly, if I make this shirt again I’ll make a smaller size. It’s not so huge on me that it looks too too big, but it’s definitely too big. I wouldn’t choose this size in a store. The idea for this shirt was for it to be somewhat of a wearable muslin – I got the fabric in a remnant sale at a local fabric store – so I decided to cut a straight size 8 with no modifications and see how it turned out. My measurements are nearly identical to the body measurements listed for the size 8, and looking at the finished garment measurements I saw that there would be 5 5/8″ (14 cm) of positive ease at the bust and I felt like that might give the “relaxed fit” the pattern says it has. But I should have checked the waist and sweep measurements, because I didn’t realize how A-line it would be. There’s 14 1/2″ (36.5 cm) positive ease at the waist, which is quite a lot, especially for someone who likes to wear collared shirts tucked into a skirt.

I posted photos of the shirt on Instagram and a lot of people said very complimentary things (which I’m grateful for!), including about the fit, but I kind of feel like the first rule of the internet is that photographs are often excellent liars. The hand on hip in the above photo is doing a lot of work. The photos below do a much better job of showing exactly how roomy this thing is.

As you can see, the collar’s also kind of huge. Part of that probably comes down to my own novice skills – it’s the first time I’ve constructed a collar and it sits a little strangely. But even if I pull the two top corners together so they meet (which I think they’re supposed to, looking at the sample photos), the collar’s still huge on me. I’ve got kind of a skinny neck, but I’ve never had a collared shirt do that before, so I don’t think it’s just me. I guess Seamwork and I have different ideas about what a “relaxed” fit is.

All that being said, it is wearable, and I do like it. The interfacing may bit a little heavy for this application, the collar might not quite sit right, but it’s also a project that really helped show me how far my technical sewing skills have come since I started sewing again last year, and that felt amazing. I’m very proud of all of my finishing on this shirt. I took my time with each step and it shows. French seams at the sides and shoulders, a neatly executed hem, straight topstitching on the button placket, relatively sharp corners on the collar… the list of the things I’m proud of is actually pretty extensive, and definitely outnumbers the flaws. There’s always room for improvement, but I can see how far I’ve come, and that feels great.

I finished it off with 13 mm shell buttons, rather that typical shirt buttons. Plastic shirt buttons proved incredibly difficult to find in Trondheim’s city center, so these made for a nice alternative. The colors go really well with the floral print, and I think I’m glad not to have plastic buttons anyway.

I’m not sure I’ll make a Willis again, but at the very least I’ll carry forward the things I learned for when I next construct a collar, and that’s worth a great deal to me. If you’ve made a Willis I’d be very curious to hear about your own experience!

driving the helgeland coast

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Since I’m still waiting on a Covid vaccine (at 33, I’m essentially at the very back of the queue in Trondheim), this year’s summer vacation has been another domestic holiday by necessity. We kept it relatively short – I’m saving more of my holiday time for December, when I should be fully vaccinated and we can hopefully plan an extended US trip to coincide with Christmas so I can see friends and family I haven’t seen since 2019. (I’ll also admit that after nearly a year and a half of travel restrictions, I’m not so used to being far from home for long!) Nonetheless, we recently went on a road trip up the coast, and I thought I’d share a little bit of it!

We drove north last summer as well, but last year we mostly stuck to the E6, the inland main highway between Trondheim and northern Norway. This year we wanted to cover some new ground, so we decided to try the coastal route. This means slower driving and lots of ferries, so we set a leisurely pace and covered 3-4 hours of driving per day with overnight stops in different coastal towns. This stretch of coast between Steinkjer and Bodø is known as Helgeland, and the coastal highway (fylkesvei 17) is called Kystriksveien, literally “the coastal road.” With 650 km of road and six ferries along the way, it’s a scenic route, and it’s also dotted with islands of all sizes along the way.

Looking toward (from left to right) Litlhornet shrouded in clouds, Kula, and Heilhornet from Fv802
Golden hour just north of Brønnøysund

Rather than starting off with Steinkjer, we opted to take the ferry from Trondheim to Fosen first, adding an additional ferry to the route. We spent the first night in Namsos, and then picked up Fv17 the next day on the way to Brønnøysund. We had excellent weather for the first few days of the trip, and then it took a turn. By the time we crossed the Arctic Circle, grey clouds had taken up near-permanent residence in the sky. The midnight sun is distinctly less impressive when you can’t ever see it. But I think it’s par for the course for some stretch of the northern summer – I remember going crazy when we lived in Tromsø, because when the weather is grey/rainy and the sun never sets, the sky just…never changes. At least we had some fine weather for the first few days.

There are all sorts of interesting places to stop along the Coastal Road, and while we didn’t venture out to any of the islands this time, they definitely seem worth visiting in the future. Mostly, we enjoyed the scenic drives and the many ferries. I love the coast.

Waiting for the ferry at Kilboghamn.
The Seven Sisters range on the horizon on the ferry from Forvik to Tjøtta.

I never take as many photos as I’d like, but on some level I suppose that’s a good thing! Travel really helps me feel present in the moment. But I did grab snaps on my phone here and there, and I hope you enjoy the little glimpse of the Coastal Road in Helgeland.

Silavatnet, or Sila Lake, in Lurøy municipality
Svartisen glacier seen from the north, across Holandsfjord

We ended the Coastal Road with a few nights in Bodø before coming home the more direct way on the E6. I’d been to Bodø before, but only for an overnight stop, so it was nice to have a little bit more time in the city. We stopped in at the city museum, part of Nordlandsmuseet, and I really enjoyed the temporary exhibition they’re currently running, called Helt Konge – it’s a photo exhibition of imagery of the Norwegian royal family in people home’s and public spaces. I’m not very fussed about royals myself, but the exhibition concept is fascinating to me and it’s always interesting to get a glimpse of other people’s lives through their everyday spaces. I also enjoyed learning a bit more about Bodø’s history from the permanent collection. The museum isn’t too big so it was a nice way to spend an hour or two.

The city museum in Bodø

If you’re curious about Helgeland and want to learn a bit more, I’ll point you to this post from the travel blog Heart my Backpack, which is full of tips and links to more info. I feel so privileged to live somewhere where this kind of scenery is so close by, but I will admit I miss traveling further afield and I’m really looking forward to doing more of that in the future, post-vaccine. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the rest of my summer holiday at home: reading, cooking, gardening. There might even be a bit of sewing before I head back to work!

new work for amirisu

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The previews for issue 22 (spring/summer) of Amirisu magazine went live last week, and I actually have some new work to share! For those unfamiliar with the magazine, Amirisu originally started off as a digital-only knitting magazine, publishing bilingually in English and Japanese (they are a Japanese company). Nowadays they’re a print magazine, publishing each issue in an English/international version and a Japanese version. They also have a brick-and-mortar yarn store in Japan called WALNUT that I’d love to visit someday.

I’ve been a fan for a long time so it’s been a real pleasure to get to work with them on some designs for the magazine. I have one pattern in issue 22, and I also have a pattern from issue 21, the fall/winter issue, that I haven’t shared here so I thought I’d share that as well. But first, my pattern for the new issue!

This hat and cowl set is called Blomsterkrans (Ravelry link), a Scandinavian word meaning flower wreath/crown or garland. I’m very pleased with how both pieces turned out. We used Knitting for Olive Merino, which is a light fingering non-superwash merino wool, and the finished fabric is lovely. The center of the flowers is worked in duplicate stitch to add a pop of color, so there are no three-color rounds in these pieces.

Amirisu’s photography is beautiful, as always. Colorwork can always feel a little funny in a spring/summer issue, but these are lightweight pieces that are certainly suitable for the Scandinavian summer, if not the typical Japanese one.

The other pattern I wanted to share was my piece for issue 21: a pair of colorwork mitts called Bramble (Ravelry link).

These were quite fun to design, because they lean more towards Fair Isle knitting than Scandinavian. I also love how they styled the model for the magazine, and I never would have thought to pair these mitts with a coat in that color. These use six colors in total, so the color choice adds a lot of room for creativity and the finished mitts can look incredibly different depending on which colors you choose. It’s also possible to simplify and use only five of fewer colors. I’ve really enjoyed seeing finished projects of this one.

It’s also nice to revisit them, because seeing them in the photo reminds me that I was working on this sample on my last international trip pre-Covid, when I was in Rome in February of 2020. It takes me straight back to the memory of sitting on the hotel bed, knitting on these with the window open, hearing the sounds of the city outside and enjoying the soft sunlight filtering through the curtains. I’d forgotten how travel knitting can be transportive that way; it makes me excited to travel again. Eventually.

–

Blomsterkrans shoot
Photos: Masahiro Shimazaki
Hair/makeup: Yoko Yoshikawa
Model: Kana

Bramble shoot
Photos: Masahiro Shimazaki
Hair/makeup: Yoko Yoshikawa
Model: Masako

thaw

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March and April have definitely brought signs of spring this year. I think this March was milder and less snowier than last year’s, something I’m feeling grateful for. We’re still in that in-between stage, where it sometimes snows, but it’s mild enough now that it never lasts for too long when it does. The daylight hours grow longer every day, and I find myself full of optimism when the sun comes out.

While I love winter, the springtime thaw always brings a specific kind of joy. Lately, my walks have been getting longer. I’m determined to do some more hiking this summer than last, and to explore some of the spots in my local area I have yet to hit up (there are plenty!). Even when the weather isn’t sunny, being outside at this time of year often makes me want to do cartwheels. The fresh air is such a boon after a long winter.

Today might be the nicest day of the year so far – April always seems to have a way of sparkling when the sun comes out, and today there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s the kind of weather that seems to draw everyone outside, as we share a collective sigh of relief. It puts a goofy grin on my face, and I especially love walking by the water in this weather. You can smell the sea salt in the air, one of my favorite smells, and when you breathe in deep you can almost taste it. It makes it feel like summer (and taking dips in the fjord) is just around the corner. I keep bumping into friends when out on walks lately as well, which only adds to my joy. This cultural experience of the good weather drawing everyone outside is something Norway has in common with Seattle, and I know from friends and family back home that Seattle’s also been enjoying a stretch of extremely fine spring weather. I’m grateful.

The other thing I feel as the days grow warmer and longer is that I feel so immensely lucky to be here. To get to live here. My days are not only full of joy – work is often tricky these days (it’s no secret that a PhD is no picnic) and the news of late has often been devastating. But it makes the joy feel all the more important, so I will savor those moments when I am fortunate to have them.

FO revisited: gathered skirt > fiore skirt

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Dianna stands in front of a grey-green wall, facing left, and wearing a green knitted top and a skirt in a subtle plaid in shades of grey, blue, and brown.

Back in October I wrote about my plans for some makes in my closet that I don’t really wear, and wanted to go back and rework. Last month I got around to reworking this gathered skirt, originally sewn in 2015 and worn out of the house maybe…once? If that? Honestly, I never wore it. I liked the idea of it – I bought that fabric because I liked it, after all. Every few months I would try it on again when I was getting dressed, thinking maybe this time would be the time it would click and I’d want to wear it. But that was never the case. Here’s a reminder of what the original skirt I sewed looked like:

The main problem was that this is a mid-weight fabric and there was simply way, way too much fabric in the gathers at the waist. I didn’t use a pattern for the original project, and the skirt pieces were literally rectangles, so the gathers were dense. I sewed it with a favorite store-bought skirt in mind, matching the length, but the store-bought skirt doesn’t actually have gathers. It’s a full and heavy skirt, but very sleek and elegant looking. And this gathered skirt? It was not. So it stayed in my closet.

When I sewed my bird-print Fiore skirt last year, I realized that I could probably use the pattern to rework this skirt and turn it into something I’d actually wear. So I dismantled the skirt in the fall, and set aside the pieces until I had time to sit down and sew them up last month. I have to say that I’m really pleased with the end result.

Dianna stands against a grey-green wall, wearing a green knitted top and a skirt in a subtle plaid in shades of grey, blue, and brown.

The new skirt weighs probably half what the original one did – there’s much less fabric in it overall. And it’s gotten quite a lot of wear since I finished it as well! I’m frequently pairing it with my Eowyn blouse by Fabel Knitwear, knit in Osloull from Oslo Mikrospinneri (a blend of Norwegian wool and silk), as shown in these photos.

I did several things differently for this iteration of the Fiore skirt compared to my bird skirt. Firstly, I sewed view A here, with the back zip (my bird skirt is view C, with the button placket down the front). I did the longer length, which the pattern calls the below-knee version, although you can probably see it’s not below the knee on me (I’m 6′ / 182 cm tall). My bird version has three inches added to the bottom of the pattern, and I originally intended to do that for this version as well, but I spaced out while cutting out the pieces and forgot to add the length. So this version hits me mid-knee, which is fortunately also a nice length.

I decided to skip pockets, even though I had pocket pieces I could reuse from the original skirt – I wanted to practice keeping the seams nice and neat on the inside, and felt like the pockets would be too much added fuss. I did french seams for the side seams, and I’m super pleased with those. I’m also quite happy with how the zip went in. I just used a zipper from my stash, so it’s not an invisible zip, but it goes quite nicely with the fabric and doesn’t draw too much attention to itself so I think that’s fine.

A close shot of the back of the skirt, shewing the grey zipper.

Overall I’m so happy I took the time to dismantle the old skirt and sew a new one, and I wore it out twice in the first week alone after finishing it so it was pretty immediately gratifying. It was also good sewing practice for me, having sewn this pattern once before, so I could focus on details. So my FO Revisited series seems to be off to a good start! And I actually already have another project to share for this series nearly ready to go (I just need to give its new sleeves a good wet block first), so you can probably keep an eye out for that soon.

a WIP check-in

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Aside from the new patterns I shared recently, it’s been a little while since I’ve actually shared any of my makes with you all. I thought it might be nice to have a little bit of a WIP check-in so I could share the main things I’m working on at the moment.

I’m very keen to finish up old WIPs this year, and I’m also really interested in working from stash for new cast-ons – an ambition that kind of fell apart last year once corona hit and I wanted to support businesses suddenly facing the loss of festival income. But I have managed to finish a couple of old WIPs since the start of the year. I started the Julenatt mittens (Ravelry link) pictured below back in December of 2018, when they were the advent mystery mitten pattern by Skeindeer Knits. It felt wonderful to finish a project started so long ago, and these will be a gift for a dear friend which somehow makes it even sweeter. I used Arctic Yarns Sølje in the Birch Leaves colorway (green), Arctic Yarns Vilje in the Snowman colorway (off-white), and some leftover grey Rauma Finull.

A pair of mittens in green, white, and grey lays on a carpet. The mittens feature a wintry scene with trees, falling snow, a little house, and a reindeer.
A pair of mittens in green, white, and grey lays on a carpet, palm side up. A geometric pattern of diamonds covers the palm and thumb.
A Fair Isle sock in shades of brown, green, blue, white, orange, purple, and yellow hangs against a white wall.

I also managed to finish my pair of Norah socks by Marie Wallin, begun in March last year at the very beginning of the first lockdown. I’ve yet to get a photo of the pair, but just the one still gives you an idea! I splurged on this kit the summer we moved to Trondheim – this particular pattern is only available in a kit with Marie’s British Breeds yarn. In one sense, that makes these the most expensive socks I’ve ever owned, but on the flipside there’s plenty of yarn leftover for future colorwork projects (and it is really lovely yarn).

The rest of my old WIPs are still very much in progress, but I’m getting there! I have another pair of mittens on the way to being finished, and these will also become a gift.

A pair of mittens in progress lays on a warm wooden table. The mittens are blue, red, and yellow, with a pattern of buildings around the cuff. One mitten is only half-finished.

This pair of Trondheim Mittens by Sofia Kammeborn (Ravelry link) is coming along nicely now that I’ve made it past the second cuff. The cuffs are a beast due to knitting with three colors at once with some pretty long floats, but this photo gives you a glimpse at how I used a bit of a cheat to get through it: if you look at the half-finished mitten, you can see the rounds where I actually knit with all three colors per round on the cuff. Most of the buildings are just the red and mustard for now, but I’ll go back and fill in the windows using duplicate stitch. I did the same for the first mitten and honestly had a much nicer result that way than when I tried to knit the whole thing with three colors at once. I started these mittens in May 2019, back when I teased the news of us moving back to Norway on my Instagram, so this is another old WIP I’ll be very glad to have finished. I cast on from stash when I started these, so they’re a mix of Rauma Finull (the dark blue and mustard), Tukuwool Fingering (the red), and indigo-dyed Lofoten Wool (the light blue).

The yoke of a cardigan in progress sits on a hanger against a grey wall. The cardigan yoke is grass green with light grey colorwork.

My other main WIPs are two newer cast-ons. Just over a month ago I pulled some beautiful Neighborhood Fiber Co Studio Sock out of my stash (the colorways are Anacostia and Charles Centre) and cast on a Valdreskofte, a traditional Norwegian cardigan I’ve wanted to make for a really long time. I’m using a pattern from a book for the numbers, but otherwise I’ve gone very off-piste, working it top-down instead of bottom-up, and making some modifications to the neck shaping and the button bands. Studio Sock is a superwash merino, so I’ll have to machine sew my reinforcements before I cut the steek, but I’m really looking forward to seeing how this one turns out. I have some buttons and ribbon (to cover the steek edges) picked out that I’m hoping to use when it’s ready for finishing, but we shall see if they work when I make it to that stage.

A multi-colored eight-pointed star knitted in garter stitch lays on a dark grey carpet.

Lastly, I’ve also had scrap projects on the brain, as a little bit of stash reorganization last month showed me just how much leftover yarn I have kicking around my craft room. Lately I’ve been very drawn to scrap blankets, although I’ve never made one before, but I got an idea stuck in my head and decided to give it a go. I’m using Mina Philipp’s Pinwheel Scrap Blanket as the base for a kind of pinwheel/log cabin mashup. I’ll make blocks of 8-pointed stars and then seam them together at the end. I wrote on Instagram about how I’m approaching creating each block seamlessly, but I forgot to mention there that I’m working a smaller number of stitches for each central pinwheel block than Mina’s pattern calls for (I’m starting with 14). I’ve never done anything quite like this, so I’m having fun with it. I have a lot of Rauma Finull leftovers (did you notice how this is the third project of this post that makes use of them?) and think I could actually get a blanket out of just Finull, so I’m going to see how far I get with just my basket of Finull.

I still have several other WIPs just waiting for attention, so I’m hoping to keep the momentum up in the coming months. I’ll have to set everything aside for a pattern sample for a magazine in the very near future, but once that’s sent off in a couple of months I’ll be back to the WIP pile!

winter solstice collab with the crimson stitchery

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One of the projects I was working on over the fall was a small collection done in collaboration with Anushka of The Crimson Stitchery. I’ve mentioned Anushka and her YouTube channel on this blog a few times before, including when I shared a few favorite video podcasts earlier in 2020. So deciding to do a design collaboration together was a great deal of fun and an interesting creative challenge as well!

We took the winter solstice as our starting point, and created a shared mood board with imagery representing our own ideas about the winter solstice. Already it was interesting to see the differences – I associate it with moody blue light, short daylight, snow, and frost, while Anushka’s associations were more in the direction of the sparkling festivities of the season. We decided we would both create accessories rooted in our shared inspiration – using different techniques (colorwork for me, cables for Anushka), but both incorporating color and texture play and using the same yarns. I think both our designs evolved along the way, as we sketched and swatched, but I really love where we ended up.

We each designed a hat pattern and a pair of fingerless mitts, and I thought I’d share each of them here in brief. If you’d like to hear about them in a little more detail, I made a video about my designs (which can be found here), as did Anushka (and her video is here).

Dianna wears a burgundy and gold hat with a pattern of colorwork diamonds while standing in front of an old brick wall and set of doors with fancy ironwork.

My hat is the Lebkuchen hat (on Ravelry here). Worked up in fingering weight, I used a metallic chainette yarn for the contrasting color for a pretty fun and glitzy effect. While the gold yarn was incorporated into all four of our pieces, this is the only one where it’s not simply used for a trim. I’ve been wanting to play with metallic colorwork for a long time, and I plan to keep exploring the creative possibilities it opens up!

A pair of colorwork fingerless mitts in shades of burgundy, off-white, and blue laid out on brown paper with evergreen branches arranged around them.

My mitts, meanwhile, are the Pepperkaker mitts (Ravelry link). These are worsted weight and work up quite quickly, which is always very satisfying! If you watch the video I made about my designs, you’ll also see the full mitten version I was working on. I’ll admit I stalled on those once I got to the thumb of the full mitten, but I do still intend to release that version as an option with the pattern!

A knitted hat featuring a diamond cable pattern in tealy blue with off-white trim and a burgundy pom pom lays on a grey floor surrounded by leafy branches and pine cones.

Anushka’s hat is the delightfully squishy Brandy Butter (Ravelry // Payhip). Another quick knit in worsted weight, it’s a mix of cables, stockinette, and ribbing. The diamond cable centered on the front echoes the diamond motif of the colorwork in my Lebkuchen hat – having the designs nod at each other that way was a deliberate choice, and it was fun to work out how we were going to do that as we worked on the collection.

And lastly, Anushka’s Ginger Snaps mitts (Ravelry // Payhip). I love these cabled mitts and I think I’d like to knit a pair for myself, probably with some modifications. These are worked in fingering weight, and I love the classic look of the cables she chose for the back of the hand.

We’re so pleased with the collection overall and I do love how the pieces work together as a set. Collaboration often pushes me to make slightly different creative decisions than I’d make working totally on my own, and that’s really refreshing sometimes.

another year, gone

Dianna4 Comments

November and December have come and gone, and it’s stayed pretty quiet in this space. There were a few reasons for that – it’s been a very busy time both at work at the university as well as behind the scenes with Paper Tiger, but I’ve also been coping with the worsening condition of a herniated disc that’s been plaguing me since early spring this year. It’s actually been a much longer chronic issue, but the occasional flare up of pain has never been a super big deal until 2020. Long story short, I wound up having minor surgery for it on December 18th. It was successful and I’m totally fine, just taking it easy at home while I recover. (I wrote a bit more about that here.)

We had a quiet Christmas at home in Trondheim and will have a quiet new year’s eve as well. Waking up to a thin dusting of snow on Christmas morning was a welcome treat (although it’s long gone now), as was video calling our families later in the day.

I did release a couple of new patterns the week before my surgery, and I will share those here as well, but they deserve their own post, so I will save it for another day soon.

Like many others, I feel like I don’t know where this year has gone. Time always seems to move quickly, but somehow in a year almost without travel, where the days bleed into one another more easily than ever before, time seems to have lost all meaning. I don’t feel too much like doing any big reflections this year. I’m just grateful to be moving towards a new year with a little bit more optimism, even if there are many things that aren’t going to change as quickly as we’d like them to.

I hope your final week of 2020 has been restful and restorative. I hope you’ve been able to find some joy in the midst of chaos and sadness. And I hope you’re able to look to 2021 with a little bit more optimism too.

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